


To raise a new Jedi

by Gabriel4Sam



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Cameos by the Rogue one team, M/M, and by Luke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-03 13:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12749484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabriel4Sam/pseuds/Gabriel4Sam
Summary: Chirrut and Baze had been put in charge of keeping an eye on Kenobi, even if they weren’t sure how that had happened. It wasn’t exactly the most exciting mission during that day of life or death for the Rebel Alliance.“How does he look?” Chirrut had asked, sitting himself down onto a crate in a deserted room of the infirmary.“I imagined him taller.” Baze had answered, his voice bored. “He just looks like an old, tired man, like all of us do these days.”





	To raise a new Jedi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady_Katana4544](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Katana4544/gifts).



> All my thanks to jedicuties on tumblr for their help with my terrible english!

 

 

In the beginning, there was only the Force. One, indivisible and everywhere and, frankly, too complicated for even the most wonderful, crafted mind to comprehend. In the beginning, there was only the Force and then came the Force Sensitives. They listened to It and It was as beloved as their father, their mother, their lover.

And then, they started to tear each other apart in Its name and the Force wept because all of them were its children.

 

**

 

The first time Baze saw Obi-Wan Kenobi, they were on Yavin 4, everyone on the base grimly preparing themselves for the assault on the Death Star. Whether they lived or die today, the old Jedi wouldn’t probably see it. If they died, he would probably go into death directly from his induced sleep; he had been transferred into a bacta tank the minute he had been carried out of the Millenium Falcon, grievously wounded by Vader.

Bodhi was piloting a search and rescue shuttle, trying to save ejected pilots during the battle, Jyn and Cassian were manning a console, helped by K2-SO, madly transmitting intel to friendly rebel cells in case of destruction by the Death Star and Chirrut and Baze had been put in charge of keeping an eye on Kenobi, even if they weren’t sure how that had happened. It wasn’t exactly the most exciting mission during that day of life or death for the Rebel Alliance.

“How does he look?” Chirrut had asked, sitting himself down onto a crate in a deserted room of the infirmary.

“I imagined him taller.” Baze had answered, his voice bored. “He just looks like an old, tired man, like all of us do these days.”

Of course, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi, hermit, legend, had chosen exactly that moment to wake up, properly panicked, and he made the bacta tank explode. There was bacta and glass everywhere as well as a half-naked, half-delirious man who could break people’s necks with his mind and who thought he was prisoner of a particularly vicious section of the Imperial Security Bureau.

Chirrut had walked on the floor, without putting his feet even once in the viscous liquid and glass and put a calloused hand on a too-narrow shoulder.

“The Imperials are doing their best to blow us up tonight. It would be sad if you helped them.” He had said, his face leaning over the panting man covered with bacta.

“Who are you?” Obi-Wan had asked, suspicion dripping from every syllable.

“Aren’t we all asking ourselves this question?”

“Seriously?” Baze had intervened. “He’s sticky and everybody can see his butt, is it the moment?”

And then he had stolen Chirrut’s cape to wrap the trembling man before going in search of a medic.

He had lived. They all had lived.

Well, a lot of pilots had died and Baze and Chirrut had spent long hours silently sitting with Bodhi, his eyes haunted by all the orange silhouettes he hadn’t found in time, all those whose ten-minutes life support after ejection hadn’t saved them from dying in the cold of space.

Too be honest, they were a little too busy to socialize with the Jedi. First, there was the evacuation from Yavin, the installation on Hoth, then they had their hands full with the survivors  from Scarif that seemed to have elected them as some sort of fathers figures, and themselves…They weren’t at their best, hadn’t been at their best for a long time to be honest but Scarif had only brought it home. Baze still woke up remembering that moment he had thought Chirrut dead on the beach and been ready to sacrifice himself and  take as many Imps  as he could with him.

Those nights, he put his head on Chirrut’s chest and listened to his heart beating, slow, strong.

Chirrut had his own nightmares but he was talking riddles around the people trying to make him open up about them.

And there was their team, the people who had been to that Imps-damned beach with them and were as prone to lying about their nightmares as themselves. 

No, in the beginning, they didn’t have time for Obi-Wan Kenobi but that didn’t mean Chirrut wasn’t interested.

 In Obi-Wan: a living Jedi!

A being that not only believed in the Force but who could touch it, breathe it in.

 In the young Luke, a fledging Jedi, the man who had put a final spearhead on their efforts against the Death Star.

“Nothing good ever came from the Temple of Coruscant.” Baze would grumble when people spoke about the old Jedi with awe in their voice, spoke of a mythical general coming back to life suddenly. “Self-righteous idiots, all of them. And I would tell say that to his face.”

“You would?”

Baze always went silent at that. The matters of the past self-righteousness of the Jedi, or their arrogance, or whatever name you put on it, didn’t really matter. They were dead, almost all of them, as lost by the hand of the Empire as their way of life.

“No, I wouldn’t.” He finally said one morning, when they had been replaying the same conversation once again, Bodhi and Cassian sharing first meal with them. Cassian was reeking of bacta and was a stressed mess, since his injuries on his last mission had stopped him from going with Jyn and a few men to extract an Imperial contact.

“Enough talk about Kenobi.” Chirrut had said. “Do you know if Cracken is relenting on his idea to ban us from intelligence mission?”

“Half the spaceport of Kaadara was on fire the last time you went on a mission. On Naboo! How could you find so much trouble on Naboo?” Bodhi remarked, his expression tight.

He had been the one to extract them and he had had a few words about their definition of “staying under the radar.” Apparently, reckless endangerment was the best way to make the discreet man yell at you. He had quite a vocabulary, too, when he got really angry.

The conversation escalated into full on bickering and Baze stopped listening.

The next day, he went to see Obi-Wan and Luke.

The old man was supervising Luke’s physical training and it wasn’t exactly going well. Oh, Luke was in good shape, you didn’t survive on Tatooine without it, and he was young, but he was also twenty years old and his mind didn’t believe it could use the Force to make impossible jumps. Twenty years of experience told him that the laws of physics were inescapable and that belief was hard to break. There had been a lot of reasons for the Jedi exclusively welcoming young children into their ranks and this had been one of them.

Obi-Wan had apparently decided, the Force only knew why, to correct that situation by making him throw himself between the roofs of different ships into the hangar. If Luke had learned how to regulate his temperature with the Force, he would probably have tried to make him jump the same way outside! But even in the hangar, it was dangerous enough, and only the old man and his capacities in telekinesis had stopped Luke from crashing onto the ice floor a good dozen of times. The Jedi’s educational methods were the cause of many dumbfounded and questioning looks in the Alliance. And a few quipping wars with Captain Solo, mother hen in chief when it was about young Skywalker who, in his own words found that“ the kid’s abysmal track records in intelligent decisions about his survival shouldn’t be encouraged.”.

 

Baze sat down next to the Jedi. The man was still wearing Chirrut’s cape, had nobody thought to find him something warmer? Hoth wasn’t exactly a friendly place for people their age, Force or no Force.

“You don’t push him enough.” Baze remarked, without even a hello. Luke Skywalker was the only Force-Sensitive training as a Jedi right now, his face was on all the wanted posters, he needed to absorb all this yesterday, if you asked Baze.

The old man didn’t turn.

“Perhaps a Guardian of the Whills could impart to him the importance of using the Force instead of almost breaking his ankle every time.”

“I’m not a Guardian anymore.”

Luke tried the jump again, and missed, but his ankle, or his neck, or whatever he would have broken, was saved by Obi-Wan throwing his hand up in a negligent gesture and catching him with the Force.

“Perhaps an assassin would impart his own wisdom.” And if the first sentence had been fairly radical for a Coruscant-raised Jedi, that one was even more an anomaly.

Surprised, Baze turned to the Jedi and observed him; Obi-Wan Kenobi looked as tired and old as he had in the bacta tank but he didn’t seem like the victim of a fresh aneurysm.

“I had a long time to meditate on the past and the future.” The Jedi said, something sad in his smile.

 

Baze went back to Chirrut and the quarters they were sharing. His friend and lover was seated on the bed, Jyn seated on the floor between his legs, and he was massaging her shoulders, while she told him all the latest gossip in the base.

“How’s the Jedi?” The young woman asked.

“News travel fast. And you have been on base for what? An hour?” Baze grumbled, battling against his scarf. It was always getting stuck in the shoulder strap of his blaster.

How he missed his canon! Even if he didn’t regret the way the weapon had gone down, saving young Bodhi’s life.

He took his time to give her a more complete answer. He always had been a man of few words.

“The Jedi is very tired. He protected young Skywalker from the shadows for so many years and now he doesn’t know how to function outside of them.”

“Does he need to be put on a suicide watch list?” One of the things he loved about their little sister was that she never feared the facts, never hid from them.

“No. But he could probably do with a few friends. Do your superiors in Intelligence have some Jedi stashed somewhere in hibernation?”

He saw the answer on her face. There would be no surprise Jedi, or if they would, they wouldn’t come from the list of contacts of the Alliance’s spies.

 

Baze spend the next morning beating the Alliance’s people on the training mat. It didn’t help the situation, of course, no matter how he wished violence would be enough, but seeing people young enough to be his children curse when they realized the  Guardian that was supposed to be less efficient in hand to hand could kick their asses until it was blue from bruises did wonder for his mood. He then spent the afternoon compulsively cleaning blasters in the armoury. He didn’t meditate, not anymore, not in the same way he had done before leaving the Temple, but he had discovered that occupying his hands with a repetitive task cleaned his mind the same way.

Once, there had been friendship, brotherhood even, between the Jedi and the Guardians of Jedha. If you went back far enough in the past, there had been a time where they had been so close that they'd been indistinguishable.

They had been slain by the same enemy and neither the powers of the Jedi, or the wisdom of Jedha had been enough. This suggested that if they wanted to be reborn, they needed to be more.

Could it be that the more needed would come from the military might of the Alliance?

No. If Darth Vader could be stopped by firepower, it would have been done long ago. They'd done good with the Death Star, but Vader and the one calling himself Emperor?

Yes, it would need more. He went in search of Kenobi. The older man wasn’t in his quarters, in the command control room, in the mess hall. That wasn’t exactly surprising; Baze had noticed that Kenobi didn’t exactly mingle most of the time. Twenty years playing hermit probably made crowds difficult to handle. Baze hoped for him that he still spent time with people he trusted, people that weren’t young Skywalker, his pupil, or people asking for military input. Somehow, he doubted that it happened. He should talk about that to Chirrut. Chirrut was a person that was good for the soul.

But first, his idea.

“I think Skywalker’s training should be a collective effort.” He said to Kenobi when he had finally tracked him down, meditating in the Tauntaun enclosure for whatever crazy reasons the older man had. One of the animals was lying on the ground and had put its head on Kenobi’s knees and was purring, something Baze didn’t know Tauntaun could do.

“All right.” Obi-Wan answered, without opening his eyes.

“All right? That’s all you have to say?” He had expected more protests perhaps a few nasty comments about Jedha. The last thousand years the Temple on Coruscant and Jedha hadn’t exactly been on the best terms.

“I survived an encounter with Darth Vader and then the risk of being blown to molecules by that sacrilege against the Force that was the Death Star. I will not push my luck tonight in annoying a Guardian of the Whills about what is clearly a brilliant idea.” Kenobi opened his eyes, looked at him and smiled.

The protests on Baze’s lips, _he wasn’t a Guardian anymore_ , died. Kenobi, old, tired, Kenobi, still smiled like the roguish, younger General from the Clone Wars, the one they had put on holos. That was a smile that did things to Baze. That was a smile that would do things to all sentients that were even moderately interested in male humans or near humans and perhaps to a few sentients who weren’t.

“Alright.” Baze grunted and then he fled.

He was pretty sure he heard a chuckle, low and almost nonexistant, but real.

Damned Jedi.

Nevertheless, since it was the first time he'd heard him laugh in the months since Kenobi had joined the Alliance, perhaps that laugh comforted Baze more that it irked him.

“So, did our resident Jedi impart any wisdom after your proposition?” Chirrut asked later that night, when they were in bed, under a mountain of covers.

Baze grunted. He was comfortable, his face pressed against Chirrut’s shoulder and he wanted to stay there until sleep took them, not have conversation about old fools. Even old fools with a nice smile, a distinguished beard and an iron will determined to destroy the Empire that Baze himself wanted to see burn.

“I know you’re not sleeping.” Chirrut insisted, something amused in his voice.

“He will do it.” Baze relented.

“And that’s why you’ve been on a warpath all evening? Because the man you thought would laugh at your idea said yes to you?”

“Have not.”

“Not what the base gossip told me.”

“Jyn needs to mind her own business a little more. Perhaps she should start by finally making a choice between her two suitors.”

Chirrut laughed, rolled over to face Baze then went to speak directly in his ear.

“Don’t talk about Jyn in bed, or I will tell you why she makes them wait and it will distract you.”

“From what?”

“From the fact that you only react the way you're reacting to Kenobi when you’re attracted to someone.”

“I am certainly not!”

“Oh, you are, and I will let you on a secret. Me too. It’s the voice. That man could read a manual about Y-Wing maintenance and it would give people inappropriate reactions in a ten miles radius.”

“I will tell the Y-Wing squadron that they should protect their innocent ships from you.”

Against his jaw, he felt the smile of his lover.

“Do you think he sleeps with my cape? The nights are terrible here, and he can’t do like me when he’s cold.”

“Do what like y… _Chirrut_! Your hands are frozen don’t put them here!”

Chirrut laughed again and it was full of life and Baze threw away the covers and went to retaliate, and one thing led the other, he forgot everything about Kenobi until the next day, when he received a message on his comm’ inviting him to Luke Skywalker’s training.

 

It was easy to work with Kenobi, easier that it should have been. The man achieved the strange feat of being simultaneously the most typical and the strangest Jedi.

It seemed the suns of Tatooine had burned away everything that was superfluous to a Jedi, had burned the thousands of years of addendum that sentients had added to Jedi philosophy, gradually deviating from their beginnings, from the Force at its purest. Obi-Wan Kenobi was now less a Corusant Jedi and more the idea of a Jedi, coalescing into one man.

And that Jedi had interest in every form of worship of the Force. He listened to Chirrut when the monk taught Luke about Jedha, placing himself in the position of the pupil, he listened and he learned and never did he express any feelings of superiority, about his own Force sensitivity.

Skywalker was an apt learner, and learn he did. Something clicked in his mind, one morning, after a long conversation with Chirrut. Apparently, to touch the Force in more than a  fleeting way, the young Jedi simply needed advice from the most trusting in the Force non-Force sensitive in the Alliance. After that, he started to Force-jump impossible distance, deflect blaster fire and tried his hands at  the entire range of Force tricks existent almost overnight.

And he didn’t learn only what the Jedi of the old and the Guardians of the Whills had to teach him, the way Baze had envisioned itWhere Chirrut and Baze went, their friends followed. Luke learned with Obi-Wan, with Baze, with Chirrut, but also with Cassian, with Jyn, with Bodhi, with K2SO, with the surviving Pathfinders of Scarif that were always following Jyn like murderous, well-armed ducklings.

That was probably a good thing Luke’s attention was partly given to other people, without that he would probably have perceived the tension developing between Baze, Chirrut and Obi-Wan. Working closely with Kenobi hadn’t exactly helped with Baze and Chirrut’s attraction. Yes, Kenobi could be infuriating but he was the sort of infuriating that made Baze want to push him against a wall and to kiss him until the other man forgot his name, not the sort of infuriating that made him want to shoot other people. Chirrut maintained that it was the voice.

He thought Obi-Wan felt that spark too. Sometimes, when the three of them were sparring, there were moments, instants where everything could come down to a lot more wrestling and a lot less clothes, but it never happened. Weeks of tension for them, of training for young Luke, of missions when Bodhi successfully piloted them out of harm way, and Cracken made sarcastic comments about the collateral damages.

It took a team to make a Jedi of Skywalker, a team of broken, disparate people, but a good team, a team that was slowly becoming a family, month after month.

“He will never be the most traditional Jedi, but he will be a well prepared one.” Obi-Wan remarked one morning, when Luke, who was standing on his head in the hangar, was levitating ten crates, a Tauntaun, an exasperated K2SO and three very amused Pathfinders.

There was something nostalgic in his voice and Baze could have sworn he was thinking of other Jedi, long dead, and the way Luke’s training could perhaps makes such a difference one day. He put his hand on the old man’s shoulder, an instinctive gesture and Obi-Wan put his hand over his, surprising him. The Jedi perceived his startled move and started to take his hand back.

“Don’t.” Baze said.

He swallowed.

“Come have dinner with me and Chirrut tonight?” He finally asked. They had been on that edge too long, something had to give, like it had done with Jyn and her two suitors.

He saw Kenobi hesitate, on the verge of refusing, and he pressed his shoulder in a silent encouragement.

“I would be honoured.” Obi-Wan answered finally.

He came to them wearing Chirrut’s cape and a mismatch of Jedi clothes and warm Alliance equipment. He came to them, as infuriating, humble, and cocky in the same breath as he was outside, as charming and exasperating. He came to them, his smile only a touch more shy. He came to them, ready to learn and to share, as he had done with Luke’s training. To teach, too, and Baze, until the end of his days, would be at risk to need to adjust his pants when hearing the words “inappropriate use of the Force.”

He came to them and they kept him.


End file.
